


the crushes of heaven (for a sinner)

by adeleblaircassiedanser



Series: so simple, a feeling [1]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Explicit Language, Internalized Homophobia, Introspection, M/M, Mickey-typical racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-24
Updated: 2014-02-24
Packaged: 2018-01-13 16:36:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1233532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adeleblaircassiedanser/pseuds/adeleblaircassiedanser
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The kid's been gone for two weeks. Mickey wouldn't say he misses him, exactly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the crushes of heaven (for a sinner)

**Author's Note:**

> And all this devotion I never knew at all  
> In the crushes of heaven for a sinner released  
> And the arms of the ocean delivered me  
> \- “Never Let Me Go", Florence and the Machine
> 
> So I wrote this right after 4x01, just for myself, because I had to. 4x07 inspired me to share it, I guess. I don't know when I will write/post more... I just feel for them in such a visceral way that I don't know what to do. I also really, really love Svetlana, so if you feel differently please keep that to yourself. I dunno. I hope you like it.

Gallagher's been gone for two weeks now. Just two weeks out of "four years, minimum," unless he gets caught for his dumbass idea of trying to defraud the United States Fucking Army. Which he probably fucking will.

Anyway, the fucker's been gone for two weeks and it hasn't gotten any less weird. Mickey wouldn't say that he misses him, exactly. Somehow that doesn't really seem to explain the situation. It's not like they spent that much time together to start with, since after the whole shitshow with Lana and Terry the kid had started missing shifts at the store. Towelhead had taken to yelling at fucking Mickey about it, too, as if he had any better idea how to handle a crying Gallagher than she did. After a week, he'd told her to go fuck herself (not in so many words, the bitch really wasn't so bad if you got to know her). His probation was up anyway, and the more, uh, traditional Milkovich enterprises were way more lucrative.

Besides that, things had settled down at the house. Mandy's new boyfriend was fairly quiet for a six foot tall black guy, not too friendly, and she was less moody with Lip out of the picture. If Mickey had been paying attention, he would say she still seemed kinda sad. But he wasn't paying attention, so. Terry had been booked for a week on some of his usual shit, and before bailing him out Mickey had made clear that the Milkovich brats would be armed from now on and he'd better stay out of their fucking way if he didn't want to find himself dead in his sleep. Now that he'd gotten his own way on literally everything, Terry was finally a little subdued. Maybe he was just on a different strain of meth. Mickey wasn't going to question it.

So things were going good, considering. Kev and the other guys at the Alibi were good company for a couple hours a day. Iggy and the cousins were always on some new money-making scheme, and with everybody out of prison they hadn't been behind on the heating bills all winter. He and Svetlana had to share a room, for appearances (and because there weren't that many extra bedrooms laying around the Milkovich mansion), but she wasn't too bad. She wasn't funny like Angie, but she was friendly and a decent cook, and she knew when not to ask questions, and when the quiet was too much. They didn't fuck, but sometimes she would rub his shoulder or something when he was falling asleep and he didn't slap her away. Maybe that was a sign of how bad things were, underneath.

He didn't miss/ the kid, exactly. It was more like the feeling he'd had after his mom died, when he was nine or ten or maybe twelve. She'd never been around, exactly, not even as much as Frank was "around" for the Gallaghers, always strung out on something or nursing wounds from Terry's latest outburst. But he was used to seeing her in the corner of the room, not talking, when he got up to get Mandy a glass of water in the middle of the night, or on a street corner somewhere after school, doing who knows what that at the time he'd never thought to question. After she'd passed he'd kept expecting her to pop up anyway, in his peripheral vision.

Gallagher leaving was like that. He kept expecting a catty text about his new hairstyle, or a dead arm for no fucking reason, or for items of his clothing to disappear and be replaced with unfamiliar hand-me-downs, just as dirty, but smelling like someone else. Besides that, celibacy was becoming an unsustainable lifestyle, and just in time whatever   
attraction he had once felt to pussy had disappeared.

He'd never have this conversation with anyone, probably, but Mickey wasn't sure Ian was 100% right about him. If this feeling of always being on the verge of puking or crying like a little fucking bitch was "love", then Mickey must love the fucking kid. But gay was a strong fucking word. No one had ever made him feel like Ian during sex, like every inch of his   
skin was on fire, like for once every piece of the world was falling exactly into place. But fucking randoms in juvie wasn't really any better than fucking Angie Zago. At least he liked Angie. They knew and hated all the same people, including 75% of his own family members. He hadn't enjoyed being held at gunpoint and forced to fuck a stranger in front   
of his dad and his- whatever- but that wasn't Lana's fault. If they had met under different circumstances, who knew.

It was hard to compare how he had felt before Gallagher to how he felt now. It had been, like, two shitting years. At one point he had almost been taller than the firecrotch. No one would believe that now.

The shittiest part was he didn't see how things could have turned out any differently. Terry was always going to find out eventually. It was a small fucking neighborhood. If Terry wouldn't have found out, Gallagher would have left for the army in a year anyway. If Mickey would have stood up to him, his pisshead of a father might have shot all three of them. If he hadn't married Svetlana, Terry might have shot him and Sasha would have held Lana's passport forever, and who knows when the next immigration bust would have been. How was she supposed to have a baby in a fucking detention center?

As much as Mickey would've liked to live in the dream world of Gallagher's mind, where that fucking Alzheimer's patient and Mickey were on the same level, where they could make out in public like Mandy and her sixth grade boyfriend, and move in together and adopt a little black baby like the fucking foster care family that had taken Gallagher's brothers, he knew better. It was always going to go to shit.

So why did he keep expecting to see Gallagher in the face of every redhead on the El? Why did he keep checking his phone instead of deleting the number? Why did he keep that faggoty ass picture Mandy had printed out on the school printer, hidden between stacks of magazines like a ten year old fucking girl?

Mickey's sure he's been keeping his breathing even, but Svetlana reaches over anyway, tracing his spine with her hand. He's getting a weird sense memory, like once upon a time his mom had touched him like that, but if she ever had it must have been long before he could remember.

"Is okay you miss him," Lana whispers.

"I don't."


End file.
